Marine 5e
You were trained for battle on sandy beaches and rocky shores. You have launched midnight raids from swift ships whose names evoke terror in the hearts of your adversaries. The water is your second home, the rain your shelter, and the crashing waves your battle cry.
Source: Ghosts of Saltmarsh
Tool Proficiencies: Vehicles (land & water)
Languages: None
Equipment: A dagger that belonged to a fallen comrade, a folded rag emblazoned with the symbol of your ship or company, a set of traveler's clothes, and a pouch containing 10gp
Features
Hardship Endured: Hardship in your past has forged you into an unstoppable living weapon. This hardship is essential to you and is at the heart of a personal philosophy or ethos that often guides your actions. You can roll on the following table to determine this hardship or choose one that best fits your character.
Hardship Endured Table
| d6 | Hardship |
|---|---|
| 1 | You hid underwater to avoid detection by enemies and held your breath for an extremely long time. Just before you would have died, you had a revelation about your existence. |
| 2 | You spent months enduring thirst, starvation, and torture at the hands of your enemy, but you never broke. |
| 3 | You enabled the escape of your fellow soldiers, but at great cost to yourself. Some of your past comrades may think you're dead. |
| 4 | No reasonable explanation can explain how you survived a particular battle. Every arrow and bolt missed you. You slew scores of enemies single-handedly and led your comrades to victory. |
| 5 | For days, you hid in the bilge of an enemy ship, surviving on brackish water and foolhardy rats. At the right moment, you crept up to the deck and took over the ship on your own. |
| 6 | You carried an injured marine for miles to avoid capture and death. |
Steady: You can move twice the normal amount of time (up to 16 hours) each day before being subject to the effect of a forced march (see "Travel Pace" in chapter 8 of the Player's Handbook). Additionally, you can automatically find a safe route to land a boat on shore, provided such a route exists.
Suggested Characteristics
Marines are looked up to by other soldiers and respected by their superiors. They are veteran warriors who rarely lose composure on the battlefield. Marines who leave the service tend to work as mercenaries, but their combat experience also makes them excellent adventurers. Though they are self-reliant, marines tend to operate best in groups, valuing camaraderie and the companionship of like-minded individuals.
Marine Personality Traits
| d8 | Personality Trait |
|---|---|
| 1 | I speak rarely but mean every word I say. |
| 2 | I laugh loudly and see the humor in stressful situations. |
| 3 | I prefer to solve problems without violence, but I finish fights decisively. |
| 4 | I enjoy being out in nature; poor weather never sours my mood. |
| 5 | I am dependable. |
| 6 | I am always working on some project or other. |
| 7 | I become cantankerous and quiet in the rain. |
| 8 | When the sea is within my sight, my mood is jovial and optimistic. |
Marine Ideals
| d6 | Ideal |
|---|---|
| 1 | Teamwork. Success depends on cooperation and communication. (Good) |
| 2 | Code. The marines' code provides a solution for every problem, and following it is imperative. (Lawful) |
| 3 | Embracing. Life is messy. Throwing yourself into the worst of it is necessary to get the job done. (Chaotic) |
| 4 | Might. The strong train so that they might rule those who are weak. (Evil) |
| 5 | Bravery. To act when others quake in fear- this is the essence of the warrior. (Any) |
| 6 | Perseverance. No injury or obstacle can turn me from my goal. (Any) |
Marine Bonds
| d6 | Bond |
|---|---|
| 1 | I face danger and evil to offset an unredeemable act in my past. |
| 2 | I. Will. Finish. The. Job. |
| 3 | I must set an example of hope for those who have given up. |
| 4 | I'm searching for a fellow marine captured by an elusive enemy. |
| 5 | Fear leads to tyranny, and both must be eradicated. |
| 6 | My commander betrayed my unit, and I will have revenge. |
Marine Flaws
| d6 | Flaw |
|---|---|
| 1 | I grow combative and unpredictable when I drink. |
| 2 | I find civilian life difficult and struggle to say the right thing in social situations. |
| 3 | My intensity can drive others away. |
| 4 | I hold grudges and have difficulty forgiving others. |
| 5 | I become irrational when innocent people are hurt. |
| 6 | I sometimes stay up all night listening to the ghosts of my fallen enemies. |
Should You Be a Marine?
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
The Marine background definitely doesn’t need to exist. It’s a hybrid of soldier, sailor, and pirate that brings with it all the expected skills and tools you’d expect alongside a mediocre ability that won’t matter to the majority of tables.
Still, it does a serviceable enough job as a soldier/pirate/sailor/veteran I’d consider as a side grade to most of those options out of the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide or Player’s Handbook. It isn’t something I’d expect to find playing great alongside options that give feats, like Squire of Solamnia or Strixhaven Initiate.
Features: Hardship Endured and Steady
Hardship Endured functions as an event that set you on your path to naval warfare; while not a feature in a mechanical sense, it sets you up with some awesome background stories that can inform your traits while giving your DM opportunities to integrate a ton of NPCs into the game.
Steady comes as the “meat” feature; in games that care about travel speed, usually ones involving a hex map or massive overland adventuring through harsh environments, this sets you up for success, but not your party. That last bit is a problem; either everyone needs to be a Marine to benefit from this, or you need to be going long distances solo.
Automatically finding safe routes to land a boat might come up a handful of times per campaign- its not enough to make me eager to get this on a sheet, though.
Skills
Athletics is one of the most commonly used skills for Strength based characters. Its a contest grapple skill, too, making it something you can find value both in and out of combat. If you want a high Strength, you probably want Athletics proficiency; getting it through your background is great.
Survival, while less pervasive, still gets plenty of opportunity to shine. Its the default natural tracking and navigating skill, something that some tables will engage with more than others, but I’d expect once or twice per adventure this kind of skill could come up and be helpful.
Other Proficiencies
Land and water vehicle proficiencies have always been enigmatic to me. When you make checks to use these tools, having the added proficiency bonus can be crucial- high speed chases through a city aboard a carriage you’re handling come to mind, as would manning ship-board elements to weather a storm or avoid damage from a monster. Few tables will find these kind of events are regularly occurring.
Equipment
The equipment you get boils down to a trinket-flavored dagger and a trinket-flavored rag. That’s a pretty far cry from what I’d expect from a war veteran.
Bonus Tables
By far the best table this option offers is the Hardship Endured table. A lot of characters can incorporate those stories into their backgrounds- you don’t need to get the Hardship Endured feature to say your character almost drowned once.
If you’re taking anything away from this option, I’d recommend it be an inspiration for a backstory built up from these life-altering events that shape who you are today and why you may be a hardened soldier with a stick up their but.
The remaining tables are close enough to the soldier tables with a smattering of naval-themed options among them I struggle to find any redeeming qualities. A lot of options feel like they have nothing to do with the core concept- “I am dependable” and “I laugh loudly and see the humor in stressful situations” aren’t unique to even soldiers or sailors. They’re just general traits any person can have that experiences stress.
“I grow combative and unpredictable when I drink” describes a large percentage of people. “I find civilian life difficult and struggle to say the right thing in social situations” is much better for defining a character who’s been irreversibly shaped by war. Four out of the six flaws feel like they could be stuck on any adventurer’s sheet, and the remaining two still work on a lot of characters that choose to spend their days cutting demons’ heads off.
Closing Thoughts
If you’re building an elite group of marines whose job it is to delve into the unknown on their vessel, I can see this background having merit. A band of sailors coming home from war, Odyssey style, could benefit from everything it offers. If everyone isn’t on board, this is just Sailor with Survival instead of Perception and a bonus vehicle proficiency. If that’s your preference, go for it; otherwise, I’d take the tables and elements you like from this and paste them on a background with more widely applicable features.
Thank you for visiting!
If you’d like to support this ongoing project, you can do so by buying my books, getting some sweet C&C merch, or joining my Patreon.
The text on this page is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms of the Open Game License v1.0a.
‘d20 System’ and the ‘d20 System’ logo are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
and are used according to the terms of the d20 System License version 6.0.
A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com/d20.